Karl Jansen,
Ketamine and Near-Death Experiences

Karl
L. R. Jansen, M.D., Ph.D.
is a Member of the Royal College of
Psychiatrists
and is the world's leading expert on ketamine.
He has studied ketamine at every level. While
earning his doctorate in clinical pharmacology
at the University of Oxford, he photographed
the receptors to which ketamine binds in the
human brain. He has published papers on his
discovery of the similarities between ketamine's
psychoactive effects and the near-death experience
(NDE) during his study of medicine in New Zealand.
Dr. Jansen believes that ketamine can have potent
healing powers when used as an adjunct to psychotherapy
but warns of the addictive nature
of ketamine.
Because of this risk, he has developed new methods
for the treatment of ketamine addiction. Dr.
Jansen left Oxford in 1993 to train in psychiatry
at the Maudsley and Bethlem Royal Hospitals.
Dr. Jansen welcomes correspondence on the topic
of ketamine. He can be contacted via e-mail
at k@btinternet.com.

The following is an
excerpt from Dr. Karl Jansen's
book, Ketamine: Dreams and
Realities,
where he documented one man's NDE and how it
is nearly identical to a ketamine experience
he had a week later. The man lost his wife in
a tragic fire and had the NDE while trying to
rescue her.

Dr. Jansen's Subject's Near-Death
Experience

I had an NDE about 6 days before
the first time I took ketamine because
my then partner died. She had a
party at her flat and the flat caught
fire. I got out of the flat and
thought that she was out as well,
but she'd been really drunk and
she'd slipped and fallen and pushed
the room door shut. I got out and
shouted, "Christ, she's not here!"
and went back up. The flat was full
of thick smoke. I thought, "Right,
what you do is you get down on the
floor and crawl along the corridor."
But there was no air there. I crawled
along and couldn't see anything.
I could hear her and I was trying
to push open this door but I couldn't.
I was overcome with smoke, and clink!

The next thing it was like white
light and then everything going
very fast. All these sounds and
things sounding far off and very
close and far off, then whoosh!
You're out of your body and there
was all this light. All this sounds
really crap, like one of those 1940s
Old Testament films ... It all happened
so quickly. The next thing, it's
very bright, you're out of your
body, flying through the night and
there's light, there's light. Er,
well, it's pitch black and there's
light - that's a better way of describing
it.

You go into the light and you just
feel that everybody who has ever
died is there. Not heavenly choirs
as such, but there's certainly a
lot of people around you and you
get waves of concern. And the next
thing was swoosh! And it was back
to the everyday world very quickly.
When I came back it was so abrupt,
and I was fine really - I had a
very narrow escape. Your first impression
would be that you fly up in the
air but that can't be. I'd have
laughed at myself ten years ago
for saying this kind of thing.

So I had an out-of-body experience
and then I got hauled out of the
flat by ambulance guys who put an
oxygen mask on my face. My partner
was on a life-support machine from
the Saturday until Monday, when
they switched the machine off.

Dr. Jansen's Subject's Ketamine
Experiences

I had acquired the "K" (ketamine)
a week previously for the party,
but didn't do it until a few days
after she died. It was the first
time I had taken "K".

I had the flat to myself. Everybody
was out and I sat in the front room
on a big comfy chair and just took
this stuff. Within about 5 minutes
I was out of my body. I was still
numb after what had happened. It
was like being outside of myself
but still there.

I could smell this perfume she used
to wear. I could sense her all round
me. It was like a way out and it
was exactly like the out-of-body
thing. It was very upsetting and
it did shake my atheism, very much
so. It made me aware of it not being
the end when all this ends.

I tried "K" again quite a number
of times and the same thing happened
every time. It was like this pure
consciousness. I hadn't any shape.
You could fly and you could actually
travel although you are still in
the same place. You are in the place
where everybody is who has ever
died. It's this big entity. It's
not like an old guy with a beard.
It's this sense of energy that everybody
who has ever moved on is there together
and it was like she was looking
after me. Precisely the same thing
happened with the "K" as happened
in the (burning) flat, which to
someone not expecting it would be
pretty scary. It was exactly the
same.

I thought that I would never find
anybody again and why hadn't I died
as well, why hadn't I managed to
get her out of that room? I thought
it was my fault, I blamed myself
for ages. I had a half-hearted idea
of taking loads of pills and not
waking up but what's the point in
that? I've already been to that
place once and they wouldn't have
me then, so why would they have
me the second time?

Concerned friends and parents made
me go into counseling and therapy
and to see psychiatrists. I was
put onto various things like Prozac,
but I was finding that my own "extra
treatment" (the ketamine) was
doing me a lot more good because
"K" is very cathartic. I was doing
it because it made me feel better,
except the first time when it was
quite a shock. It made me feel a
lot less unhappy knowing that she
was still there in one way or another.
It would have taken a lot longer
for me to recover if I hadn't taken
"K" because it gets rid of a lot
of hurt instantly ... It's very
reassuring in a way.

"What
the caterpillar calls the end of
the world, the master calls a butterfly."
- Richard Bach